Weekend Entertainment Guide 9/27/24 + New Moon 10/2/24

Self-healing, Libra season, skipping grades

I was supposed to keep this short to focus on editing essays for Changing of the Guards: Pluto on the Precipice, but there is just a lot going on with the upcoming Solar Eclipse in Libra.

Changing of the Guards is going to be good, though. Thanks to Substack, I recruited writers with a great variety of life experiences and viewpoints. The resulting anthology will have something for everyone and something to challenge everyone — with Pluto being the focus, we’re covering some heavy topics.

Solar Eclipse (New Moon) 10/2/24

A Solar Eclipse is simply a New Moon that happens close to either the North Node or the South Node of the Moon. The North Node and the South Node are always directly across the zodiac from each other. The nodes take 18.6 years to cycle through all the signs. Currently, the North Node is in Aries, and the South Node is in Libra. The main concern of the Aries-Libra axis is the self (Aries) versus the other (Libra).

The Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024, that attracted a lot of baseless and unwarranted fearmongering was close to the North Node in Aries. The upcoming Solar Eclipse on October 2, 2024, will be close to the South Node in Libra. Eclipses can stay in the same pair of signs for a couple of years, so I wrote about a Solar Eclipse in Libra during October 2023 as well.

The April 2024 Solar Eclipse in Aries was notable for having the Sun and Moon closely conjunct Chiron, an asteroid associated with the archetype of the wounded healer. For the October 2024 Solar Eclipse, the Sun, Moon, and Mercury in Libra will all broadly oppose Chiron in Aries. Although an orb of 10 to 11 degrees would not always be counted as an opposition, I think it makes sense to do so here mostly as a contrast to the previous Solar Eclipse that had a tighter connection with Chiron.

It is common for issues that come up during one eclipse season to be revisited during the next eclipse season. For example, as the current eclipse season dawned in Weekend Entertainment Guide 9/13/24, I finally went public with an observation I made privately about the growing interest in neurodiversity right before the April 2024 Solar Eclipse — what I saw in the intervening months only convinced me further that I was correct.

As I said there, the current wave of interest in conditions like ADHD and autism includes both formal diagnosis and self-diagnosis. I noted, “Isn’t self-diagnosis the most stereotypically Aries approach to a medical issue ever?” I connected all this to Chiron entering the independent and individualistic sign of Aries in 2018, and I predicted that the situation would intensify as Neptune and Saturn move into Aries beginning in 2025.

Since then, I thought of a separate situation that echoes the theme of self-diagnosis and self-treatment for medical issues. During the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors opposed to the medical establishment’s handling of COVID-19 opened telemedicine practices where people could seek out prophylactic prescriptions for controversial medications such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Prominent examples include DrStellaMD by Dr. Stella Immanuel and The Wellness Company by Dr. Peter McCullough. The goal was typically that healthy customers would acquire these medications to have on hand, and then they would just take the medications they had on hand instead of seeking care from the medical establishment if they contracted COVID-19 in the future.

I don’t think there is a lot of overlap between people who are self-diagnosed with various forms of neurodivergence and The Wellness Company’s customer base. To rely on stereotypes for a moment, the former group skews younger and politically liberal, and the latter skews older and politically conservative. When people who have nothing in common with each other are unwittingly acting out the same energy, you know you’ve captured the astrology of the moment.

As the uproar around COVID-19 recedes, The Wellness Company has pivoted to selling emergency kits focused on more prosaic concerns — antibiotics that can be used for a urinary tract infection if you can’t get to the doctor, for example. Many people might see the attraction of having antibiotics for a urinary tract infection on hand without the hassle of an in-person doctor visit, even if they don’t share McCullough’s views regarding COVID-19. If an innovation is ultimately a good thing, its birth under contentious circumstances can often be forgotten.

Another prominent example of the popularity of self-healing is Dr. Nicole LePera, known as The Holistic Psychologist. Her website explains:

As a clinical psychologist in private practice, Dr. Nicole LePera often found herself frustrated by the limitations of traditional psychotherapy. Wanting more for her patients—and for herself—she began a journey to develop a united philosophy of mental, physical, and spiritual health that equips people with the tools necessary to heal themselves. Nothing short of a paradigm shift, Dr. Nicole LePera’s teachings empower the individual to break free from trauma cycles and create who they want to become.

LePera, who has over 8 million followers on Instagram, offers several workbooks — some for sale and some as free downloads from her website. She also hosts the SelfHealers Circle, which has over 20,000 members. In true cat-herding Chiron in Aries fashion, she is neither here nor there in terms of my two previous examples. She has caught some flak for suggesting that complex trauma is often misdiagnosed as ADHD.

You don’t even need to have a fancy website or dive into a hot-button controversy to get on the bandwagon of self-healing. For most of Pluto’s transit through Capricorn, even longer than Chiron has been in Aries, I’ve been self-treating a digestive issue with milk thistle capsules. I just read about milk thistle online and tried it out, and I discovered that it relieved my symptoms. If I miss a day or two of taking milk thistle, the symptoms noticeably flare up, so I know I’ve found something that works.

Well, I have said a lot about what people feel comfortable doing by themselves these days, but the self is just one end of the Aries-Libra polarity. This coming Solar Eclipse emphasizes the Libra end — the other!

An extreme tendency in society is often a reaction against something that went wrong at the opposite extreme in the past. I can see that the movement to the Aries extreme of self-healing is an understandable reaction against a long period of time when people just sat back and passively expected doctors to prescribe pills to fix them. Libra energy gone wrong can be overly reliant on the opinions of others in that way.

In terms of finding balance at the upcoming Solar Eclipse in Libra, I would advise that self-healing is an option these days, but it isn’t a mandate. There is nothing wrong with consulting some sort of professional healer if you feel like you are in over your head trying to work things out on your own.

As described in last week’s piece on Carter Heyward, seeking out a healer who is demographically similar to you isn’t always a guarantee of a great outcome. No matter who you pick, they’re going to be a separate person from you — and that’s potentially where the magic is!

Hot on Substack

Posts about the Sun entering Libra on Sep. 22

Victoria Bee via

Astrologers' Co-Op

, Libra I: Libra and Bisexuality and the 2 of Swords

Bee comments on the 2 of Swords, an image often associated with indecision, being assigned to the first decan of Libra: “Ultimately, the Libra I decan isn’t about making a choice, but rather the act of weighing the multiple pieces of everything.”

Alison Dale

via

Astrum Opus

, The Equinox Welcomes in Libra Season

Dale connects Libra to the midlife crisis portion of a human lifespan, noting the upheaval and search for balance that often occurs amid the midlife crisis transits.

Bryan Winchell

, Libra Season 2024 Is For Transforming Relationships And Bad Chats With Bots Named Charlie

Winchell experiments with asking ChatGPT to interpret the astrological transits of this year’s Libra season.

alchemilie

, the sun moves into libra and persephone season begins with an ECLIPSE. cardinal risings, your time is now.

I liked this post’s use of the adjective “ketuvian.” I was not previously familiar with that word, but the South Node is sometimes referred to as Ketu, and so it makes sense that the term ketuvian refers to the Solar Eclipse conjunct the South Node.

Martha Fearnley

, Horoscope for September 23-29, 2024

Fearnley has a good point that Venus, the ruler of Libra, will be in Scorpio for most of the time that the Sun is in Libra this year:

This makes for a different tenor of Libra experience than we might typically be used to. Scorpio is the Mars ruled water sign and the sign of Venus’ detriment. Where Venus as Libra’s ruler likes to connect, understand, and cohere, Venus in Scorpio is doing it under the banner of Martial prerogatives: to possess, exploit, and manipulate. There’s a feeling of wanting to relate but knowing it’s for the wrong reasons, or using the ‘wrong’ tools in desire’s name.

Posts about the 2024 United States election

Anteros Astrology

, Walz vs Vance, October 1st, in The Big Apple: What Does the Astrological Map Tell Us?

Karl Skellenger provides a horary reading for the vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and J.D. Vance scheduled for October 1.

Dorothy Oja's PlanetWeather

, Plaid Dad – Tim Walz

Oja analyzes the natal chart of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

Other posts

Saffron Dennis

, Peridot/Olivine

Peridot is the birthstone for the whole month of August. Dennis, a Leo Sun with the Moon and Venus in Virgo, makes a case for the stone’s ability to balance both Leo and Virgo energies.

Francesca Oddie Astrology

, The Astrology of Normal People

Oddie talks about how most people in the same school grade have the same Saturn sign, giving them the same set of insecurities. In her case, that was Saturn in Scorpio. She claims that none of her Saturn in Scorpio schoolmates married someone the same age, as having a partner with the same Saturn sign would have been too emotionally exposing.

Well, my parents were both born during the 1950s Saturn in Scorpio transit. They were classmates from elementary school through eighth grade, when my dad’s family moved away, and then they reconnected and married each other in their early twenties. They then had a very dramatic Saturn return together during the 1980s Saturn in Scorpio transit when Oddie was born. The outcome of all the drama was that they decided to become parents, and then I was born with Saturn early in Sagittarius.

I used to subscribe to The New York Times, and a frequent topic of angst there was whether a child is better off being the oldest or youngest in their class. Should a child start school as young as possible, or should they be “redshirted” until they are older and more physically mature than their classmates? No matter how anyone games the system, someone is going to be the oldest in the class, and someone is going to be the youngest in the class. Still, the commenters on the Times had scads of arguments in either direction — and yet none of them addressed the astrological component of the situation.

Being born in August 1986, I was one of the younger students in my original school class. After I skipped sixth grade, I was definitely the youngest student in Oddie’s class, those born September 1984 to August 1985. My classmates, like Oddie, had Saturn in Scorpio, while I did not. The main time that this became a problem was in college, when they all had transiting Neptune in Aquarius squaring their Saturn in Scorpio, and I did not.

When transiting Neptune squares your Saturn, you’re pushed to decide how and if you’re going to assert your boundaries. Neptune moved into Pisces and got around to squaring my Saturn in Sagittarius when I was well into my twenties, so I had my own version of that lesson then.

Back to college, though, I didn’t have Neptune squaring my Saturn then, but I did have transiting Neptune in Aquarius squaring my Scorpio Moon and then opposing my Leo Sun. I had a lot of problems with interpersonal boundaries in college! My classmates who had Neptune squaring their Saturn were on the receiving end of me and had to figure out how to set boundaries with me. It was painful for all of us. I don’t think anyone involved knew anything about astrology at that time — I certainly didn’t — but the dynamic is clear in retrospect.

Should a student skip a grade? I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all answer. I would look at it on a case-by-case basis, and I would include astrology as one of the factors to consider. For example, Saturn is typically in a sign for about two and a half years, so there could be cases where skipping a grade would not change the Saturn sign of one’s classmates, and that might make skipping a grade less disruptive. On the other hand, if a child had Saturn in hard aspect to everything in their chart, skipping a grade — or being held back a grade — into a class where everyone else had a different Saturn sign might be the best thing that ever happened to them.

At this point, I don’t regret having skipped a grade, but I can see how it contributed to a difficult situation. I also think there is no perfect experience in school no matter what anyone does. School is a basically Saturnian force, and the nature of any Saturnian force is that you have to adapt to a situation that won’t always go your way.